ozfandomcom-20200223-history
Maps of Oz
Maps of Oz have been produced almost since the beginning of he Oz literature. Along the way they have embodied one of the many inconsistencies that seem almost characteristic of Oz. Any map of the subject must be rooted in the description of the Land of Oz given by L. Frank Baum in the first Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which details the four separate countries of Oz in the four cardinal directions, with their names and characteristic colors. (The term "Gillikin" is not introduced until the opening chapter of the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz.) The earliest known map of Oz is one that Baum had made for his Fairylogue and Radio-Plays in 1908. It shows the four countries with their proper colors, located in their proper places — Gillikins up, Quadlings down, Munchkins to the East on the right, Winkies to the West on the left. The first printed map of Oz, what Baum biographer Katharine M. Rogers has called the "first official map," was published in the eighth Oz book, Tik-Tok of Oz (1914); and it creates a problem. The book actually features two maps: * A map labelled "Map of the Marvelous Land of Oz Drawn by Prof. Wogglebug T. E." produced on the book's front endpapers. This map reverses two of the four countries, showing the Munchkin Country to the West, on the left, and the Winkie Country to the East, on the right. The map's directional indicator is the standard one, East to the right and West to the left. * A second, larger-view map labelled "Map of the Countries Near to the Land of Oz" on the book's back endpapers. This map shows Oz in relation to Baum's other fantasy realms, Ix, Ev, Merryland, and others. Amazingly, this map flips East and West into a reversal of the normal positioning, placing East to the left and West to the right. The directional indicator in the map's corner shows this clearly; and consistent with this reversal, the Munchkin Country appears correctly in the East, but to the left, and the Winkie Country correctly in the West, but to the right. This reversal of direction recurs in a later Oz book. In The Lost Princess of Oz, Chapter 4, Baum writes that the eastern portion of the Winkie Country "lies nearest to the Emerald City," which places the Winkie Country west of the capital; yet the accompanying map shows it to the right of the Emerald City. (How could this confusion have occurred? Baum had already dreamed up a flag of Oz; on a flag, the up and down directions are generally consistent, but the right and left sides reverse depending on how the flag is viewed. A flag on a flagpole is just as visible from its reverse side as its obverse.) The result of this confusion is that post-1914 maps of Oz often place the Munchkin Country in the West and the Winkie Country in the East, though this violates the clear details of the first book. In The Scarecrow of Oz, Chapter 9, there is a reference to "the map of Oz," showing that the people of the land had a cartography of their own. Other references to maps of Oz occur in Rinkitink in Oz, Chapter 1, The Tin Woodman of Oz, Chapter 3, and Glinda of Oz, Chapter 1. In the 1920s and '30s, Baum's successor Ruth Plumly Thompson wondered why publisher Reilly & Lee did not create an updated map of Oz, one that showed the many fantasy locations in her books. That map had to wait a long time: James E. Haff and Dick Martin created such an updated map in 1960, featuring locales not only from Thompson's books but from those of later "Royal Historians" too. This map corrects the positioning of the Munchkin and Winkie Countries, however doing so creates its own inconsistencies with earlier maps (for instance, the Blue Forest and Ojo's home went from being in southern Munchkin Country near the border with Quadling Country to northern Munchkin Country bordering Gillikin Country, contradicting the books). Haff and Martin's accompanying map of "The Magical Countries surrounding Oz" shows the entire region of Nonestica and the Nonestic Ocean; again the correcting of the directions violates a detail from Ozma of Oz in which Ozma's party crosses the Deadly Desert from Ev into Munchkin Country, now on the opposite side of the continent in the updated map. Gallery map fairylogue.jpg|''The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays'' MapOfOz.jpg|''Tik-Tok of Oz'' Nonestica.jpg|Nonestica. (Tik-Tok of Oz) Oz Map.jpg|Panorama by Dick Martin karta-lv.jpg|Magic Land (The Wizard of the Emerald City) map_1921_oz_gameboard.jpg|''The Wonderful Game of Oz'' (1921) Ozoplaning_map.jpg|''Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz'' club map.jpg|International Wizard of Oz Club nonestica club map.jpg|Nonestica. (International Wizard of Oz Club) wicked map.jpg|''Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West'' son of a witch map.jpg|''Son of a Witch'' a lion among men map.jpg|Munchkinland and surrounding area. (A Lion Among Men) o.z. map tin man.jpg|The Outer Zone. (Tin Man). emerald city confidential map.jpg|''Emerald City Confidential'' wicked musical map.JPG|The Land of Oz. Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz LegendsOfOzWorldMap.jpg|''Legends of Oz World'' Marvelous Map.jpg|''The Marvelous Map of Oz '' (2009) Otgap map.jpg|The Land of Oz Oz the Great and Powerful Ggtimage.jpg|''The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road'' Thjyimage.jpg|''OZombie'' References * L. Frank Baum. The Annotated Wizard of Oz. Michael Patrick Hearn, ed. New York, W. W. Norton, 2000. * Michael O. Riley. Oz and Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank Baum. Lawrence, KS, University Press of Kansas, 1997. * Katharine M. Rogers. L. Frank Baum, Creator of Oz: A Biography. New York, St. Martin's Press, 2002. Category:Oz Culture Category:Oz